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Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell says he opposes SB 723, the bill to provide that each U.S. House district choose its own presidential elector. See this story. Thanks to Professor Michael McDonald for the link.

No Responses

Vogel, a former Republican National Committee election lawyer, said she saw no problem with the bill’s legality, but objected to the image it creates for her party so soon after Obama’s victory last fall.

“It’s the timing of it,” she said. “It’s just an awful impression it makes.”

You’d think by now Republicans would be used to making awful impressions.

Gov McDonnell must either have more than a shred of decency or realize the does exist the capacity for regular voters to understand and/or care about political procedural, in fact both of those things may be true.

The idea that congressional districts would be extremely gerrymandered in favor of the Republicans and then electoral votes would be distribted by pluralities in those districts and two remaining electoral votes would both go to the candidate who might win most of those districts despite the possibility another candidate may have received more popular votes statewide is really ugly. About as ugly the EC system itself.

Its strange to see republicans backing away, as if they’re lacking coordination and will.

@2 The revised system, if they’re using the ME/NE system of allocting Electoral votes would assign the 2 state wide EV chooising the 2 statewide electors to the candidate with the most votes statewide, not to the candidate winning the most CDs.

The best way to choose the POTUS would be to use the ME/NE system nationwide. Of course only changing in states won by Obama would favor Rs just as only changing states won by Romney would favor Ds. Changing every state would favor the people. It would make the whole nation more competitive and result in the electoral vote more closely matching the popular vote while maintaining the overwhelming benefits of the Electoral College system and avoid the detrimental effects and dangers of direct election of the POTUS>

Under the ME/NE system, Romney would have won the electoral vote while losing the popular vote by 4%. It would make the will of the people irrelevant; elections would essentially be decided by governors and state legislatures who can gerrymander their states’ districts at will.

@6 No. There is no truth to number 5. If the system were changed to the ME/NE EV system, campaigns would be run differently with different strategies, different campaign events, different advertising choices, different voter choices, much greater voter turnout and the choice of different candidates by the Parties.

So, had the system been changed prior to 2012: It is likely that the Rs would have selected different POTUS and VP candidates. Advertising would have targeted hundreds of newly competitive Congressional Districts. Funding, advertising and candidate selection for the House and the Senate would have also been changed. Millions of additional voters would have turned out. Millions of voters would have had more reason to ponder and change their choices of the changed candidates.

The one thing we do know is that the elections would have been more open and free with voter choice finally represented.

Why would it be do difficult to gather that data? One would just have to know who “carried” each congressional district in addition to who carried each state. I don’t know where to get the congressional district data but I am fairly certain it can be found.

#8 Imagine if you wanted to determine who would have won the 1971 NBA Championship if the 3-point rule had been in effect.

You dig out the old films, and electronically project the 3-point line, and then count the score.

But you discover shot after shot where the guard was standing on the line, or the defense not aggressively defending longer shots that would only count for two. Or you could have a game where a two-point margin changed to a tie, because of a couple of three-pointers. But there was no overtime to determine who would have really won. Or you might have a team running out the clock, trailing by one; or taking a quick shot for two, rather than taking a three for a tie.

There would have been different tactics throughout the game, and the season. There might have been different teams in the final.

I understand all that, Jim. There would be very different tactics and strategy. I was only curious as to applying the NE/ME “system” to the 2012 results in retrospect. Doug provided me the information I was looking for.